Culture/Counter-Culture/Subculture: A Critical Argument
Objectives:
• To formulate an original, complex thesis about a counterculture
• To develop a well-supported argument that defines, evaluates and interprets the impacts of that counterculture, including contemporary relevance
• To use a range of research methods to find appropriate support for your argument
• To demonstrate sophisticated critical thinking
• To synthesize the skills and concepts practiced in earlier assignments in a compelling academic essay
Context:
In the preface to The Making of a Counter Culture, historian and writerTheodore Roszak (who is said to have coined the term "counterculture") defines youth movements of the 60s as "all we have to hold against the final consolidation of a technocratic totalitarianism in which we shall find ourselves ingeniously adapted to an existence wholly estranged from everything that has made the life of man an interesting adventure."E.A. Swingrover (editor, The Counterculture Reader) claims that countercultural roots spread from the Romantic poets of the English Industrial Revolution through punk rock. He identifies fashion, sex, music and drugsas common countercultural themes; ironically, these may be the most commodified elements of 60s counterculture. Writing about a counterculture (or subculture) requires a keen understanding not only of its community members, but of its relationship to the dominant culture. It requires you to analyze how others have defined countercultural legacies, but also to find a new purpose for your reinterpretation.
Assignment:
In this research-supported critical essay, you will explore beliefs and theories about a counterculture or a subculture in order to support a new interpretive argument about its ultimate impacts on our wider, holistic culture. In doing so, you'll synthesize important argumentative skills and concepts you practiced in previous essays, including: imagining an ideal audience, having a purpose, narrating necessary background information, using strategies for definition, clarifying the logic of cause and effect, developing criteria for evaluation, including specific detail, and delighting your readers with unique and subject-appropriate style.While essays will each find their own form and direction, all should:
• define the differences between the dominant or majority culture and the counterculture
• discuss elements of non-conformity through which the countercultural community is joined
• analyze how the community expresses itself in style, symbols and actions that subvert or challenge the values of the dominant culture
• explore and evaluate degrees to which the counterculture engages in cultural appropriation from the dominant culture or other minority cultures, and/or is commodified by the dominant culture
• interpret and assess the whole-culture impacts of the countercultural movement
In combination, the above points will constitute your thesis. Thesis is likely to be more than one sentence; the thesis of scholarly articles is often expressed by an abstract, and your might be, too.
Topic Proposal Memo: Culture/Counterculture/Subculture Essay
1. Write a working thesis that defines the counterculture (or subculture) as distinct from the dominant or mainstream culture of its time.
2. Find a scholarly article that analyzes your proposed counterculture, provide its MLA citation, and summarize its thesis.
3. Find one popular article about the counterculture, provide its MLA citation, and describe its purpose.
4. What about exigence? Why do we need a new understanding about this counterculture now?
5. What about audience? In what specific publication might your article appear, and why?